


sentire

by snowdarkred



Series: dig your teeth in and tear until you taste (peter/stiles oneshots) [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Power Dynamics, Psychic Abilities, Secrets, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdarkred/pseuds/snowdarkred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[to feel]</p><p>Stiles hears the whisper of death before it strikes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sentire

**Author's Note:**

> _Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul._ \-- Oscar Wilde

_** i. ** _

Stiles hears the whisper of death before it strikes. Sometimes hours before, sometimes weeks and months and years. He can feel it hum in the back of his skull, travel up and down his spine, wrap around his shoulders like the cold hug of finality. 

When Stiles was five, he heard his mother’s death, ringing true six years in advance. 

_**** _

_** ii. ** _

Peter sucks in the taste of sorrow like the finest wine. Well, he thinks to himself sometimes — one isn’t supposed to suck down wine, one is supposed to savor it. But Peter has always been greedy. He takes and takes, and when it’s not enough, he creates more for a bitter harvest. 

A seemingly careless word here, an artfully placed reference there, a casual nudge, and he breaks them. He draws hurt from them, coaxing the sweetest notes from their bouquet — pushing his wine analogy too far, perhaps, but Peter likes it. 

Emotions are richer when tinged in pain. 

Constructed disasters and cheerfully applied malice get him what he needs to stave off the rabid wolf within — but he always wants more, even though it is a dangerous hunt. A stray or misplaced push can bring the whole thing down around his ears. He’s a wolf who fed off his own pack before the fire, his own niece and nephew after. He is a monstrosity and a villain, and the feast isn’t over yet.

****

_** iii. ** _

Stiles listens hard for his father. He goes through his days with one ear cocked for the sound of the Sheriff’s death toll. There have been close calls before, and he’s not sure what he’s afraid of more: that he’ll hear it coming or that he won’t.

_**** _

_** iv. ** _

The Martin girl was delicious while she lasted.

  


_** v. ** _

That Stiles hates hospitals isn’t surprising. Between his mother’s slow slide into death’s arms and the orchestra of endings, hospitals are loud, chaotic places that drown everything else.

Animal deaths are quieter, somehow. Their rising and falling foretellings linger less and echo softly. They’re almost comforting in comparison. (Stiles is pretty sure that that is a fucked up thing to think, but there’s no helping it.) Visiting Scott at work is significantly less stressful than, say, dropping in on Mrs. McCall or ducking into the station while his father works a dangerous case.

Stiles heard the deputies’ deaths coming. The werelizard aspect was a surprise.

Stiles has never heard a werewolf death, and that strikes him as odd. He didn’t hear the Hale fire coming, even though his mother was acquaintances with Bridget Hale, but that’s understandable — his mother’s death rang through his head in a building crescendo for years, and shock of its ending made him feel deaf for months. More than long enough for the Hale pack to meet their untimely demises. 

He didn’t hear Peter Hale’s death either, not even when he was standing across the clearing watching him burn. Watching Derek Hale tear his throat open.

The world is filled with sound, but Peter Hale is silence. 

_**** _

_** vi. ** _

Peter dreams of him sometimes, while he’s in the ground. Between tormenting the Martin girl — dearest Lydia, with her crisp clothes and sharp wit and stark terror — and planning his nephew’s downfall, he dreams, and when he dreams, he dreams of that wrist and those lips and that _taste_. 

  


_** vii. ** _

“You’re not dead,” Stiles says, stating the obvious. Peter is watching him, mouth parted and eyes flickering between Stiles’s mouth and some point to the left of his shoulder.

“Clearly,” Peter snorts, pulling himself to his full height. Stiles is taller, but only just. 

“There’s something wrong with you.” Stiles hovers between taking a step forward and a step back. Maybe there’s a range, an edge that he can stall at, between the blessed, peaceful silence and the never ending song of, well. Death. Maybe there’s a middle ground he can find between what weaves through Peter’s gaze and what he’s been hearing from birth.

(Mrs. Peterson’s death rattled his bones in the night, so sudden and loud that it could only be murder, right across the street from the Sheriff’s house. Stiles stayed awake as the deputies lined the property with yellow tape and carted the husband away.)

“ _Rude_ ,” Peter says mockingly. “I didn’t claw my way back to life to be sassed by a teenager.”

“My sass is delightful.” The pause in their attempt at banter is awkward and heavy, and Stiles wonders if he left off the initial S sound by accident. 

Peter smiles then, painfully honest and barbwire sharp. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with _you_ ,” he says. “Unless you count all the lying.” 

Stiles can’t control this flinch, couldn’t even though he tries. Peter inhales deeply, letting his eyes fall close in bliss. The hairs on the back of Stiles’s neck prickle. He takes that step back, and then another.

_**** _

_** viii. ** _

The boy begins to back away, but then he stops like a puppet whose strings have reached their limit. He swallows harshly and glances behind him, arching his shoulders as if an incredible weight is pressing down on him. Then, as Peter watches, still relishing the lingering guilt and spark of anger, Stiles straightens and steps forward. He raises his chin to Peter, an irresistible challenge.

“What are you doing here?” Stiles asks. He comes closer, and Peter can taste the shame flowing closer to him, and it makes his fangs _ache_. He wants. He wants to sink into that, to rip this boy apart and salivate over the remains, to roll in his depression and self-hatred and carefully hidden despair. 

“I came to see you,” Peter says honestly. He’s a predatory wolf watching as his prey creeps closer and closer. Stiles is losing the pinched look around his eyes but gaining tension in the twist of his hands.

Peter wants to touch as well as taste, so he does, drawing Stiles in until Peter can tilt his head and lick at the salt on his skin. Stiles lets him with a sigh, although his fingers dig into Peter’s flesh like claws.

“I dreamed about you,” Peter whispers, as intimate as he knows death to be.


End file.
